Galveston County Daily News published an article on March 9, 2010 criticizing those who have spoke out against state District Judge Fine’s ruling that the death penalty is unconstitutional in Texas. From other district level judges on through the governor himself, critics of the pretrial ruling have cited a variety of reasons as to why the ruling should be ignored, although most point to Judge Fine’s past or political tendencies, not the issue at hand.
The Daily News points to three areas of real debate that Judge Fine’s ruling should have sparked:
- Possibility of error, especially with DNA exoneration’s
- Questions of racial bias, based on the findings that prosecutors in Dallas County “had followed a specific policy of systematically excluding blacks from juries.”
- Representation given to poor defendants usually ends in a death sentence while “those who can afford to pay for a near miraculous defense often get one.”
To view the Galveston County Daily News article in it’s entirety please follow this link.